I'd like to share with you, a little bit about me and my choice in this election.
For the first 13 years of my life, I was raised in Glenwood City, a small farming town here in Wisconsin. Glenwood City's claim to fame is it's "57 Hills" and our school mascot was the aptly-named "Hilltopper"--whatever the heck one of those is.
On the edge of our town which boasts a population of approximately 1,100, stand two fiberglass Holstein cows. In the spring, straw hats are placed on their heads by the local 4-H group. These cows have the pleasure of being perched high above the St. Croix County Fairgrounds on Highway 128, where every July they have the opportunity to observe some of the finest our state has to offer in the way of crafts, garden grown vegetables, and meat and hobby animals. The big shows, however, don't involve sheep and cattle. Every year there is a rodeo, a tractor pull, and a demolition derby, all of which attract hundreds.
Midway through my 13th year, we moved to an even smaller town one county over--Boyceville, population 900 and some bits. This is a town that boats several bars and churches--most sharing the same block. There really isn't anything in Boyceville. The Wal-mart that cropped up 15 miles away in Menomonie destroyed our main street. But as of last year, Boyceville still had a gas station, so it has that going for it.
My family didn't farm, we lived in a trailer. In fact, when I was in school, most farmers' kids were "the rich kids"--they wore their Eastland shoes and Girbaud jeans. Sure, they kind of smelled like barn, but everyone did. The really cool parents let their kids drive tractors to school rather than make them wait until they were 16 for their driver's license. But since the trailer court was within blocks of the school, my sister and I just walked.
When I was a teenager, I had big plans to get out of that town. Big city people love to talk about "small-town charm," but I didn't see any. Small towns are oppressive--especially if you're the cheerleader who wants to wear a stocking cap during the snow-ridden football game, or the girl who listens to Tool rather than Alabama. Or the girl who lives in the trailer court. Maybe it is the "elitist" in me, but I didn't want to marry a farmer or live in a trailer the rest of my life...so I did something very few of the other 52 people I graduated with did--I enrolled in college.
I was accepted into the Graphic Design program at the University of Wisconsin-Stout in 1996. You only need an ACT score of 18 to get in, but I got a 28, so I wasn't expecting any trouble. Within the first month of my first semester there, however, I found out I was pregnant. My boyfriend and I had been dating for 3 years at that point. Although I was devastated, I knew I'd do the right thing and give the baby up for adoption. I didn't know what a good mother was or how to be one, no money, nowhere to live...and if I kept that baby, I'd never get out. And then I found I wasn't having a baby, rather I was having two...and I decided I'd keep them and drop out of school lest I end up on the Maury Povich show in 18 years. See, in small-town Wisconsin, there isn't much to do. Your options are, have lots of random sex, drink every Friday night in the corn field, sell drugs, do drugs, make drugs--or get the hell out.
At the age of 11 I knew I was a Democrat. See, my mother was a religious fanatic who preached the end of the world to me daily. "Armageddon" was the word of choice in my house, and Desert Storm was the beginning of it--George Bush was a Republican and Bill Clinton was my man. He was going to prove my mother wrong. So while I knew I was a Democrat all of those years, I didn't become active until the age of 15 when my best friend was murdered by a drunk driver on Valentines Day. That same year I went to Madison to push for drunk driving law reform, and became an ambassador for Safe and Sober.
Since then, I've worked phones and polls, canvassed for and donated to Democrats, all while being a student, a mother, and down-right dirt poor. My children don't play "house" they play "let's vote." We garden together, research local history together, and campaign for Democrats together.
So when Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy, I was ecstatic. Man, I really wish she would have done it in 2004, but I got over it. She was a strong woman--someone I looked up to, which is more than I could say for my own mother. She made me believe I could go to college and I could be more than a small-town girl from the trailer court. And after Bush, this country really needed her.
But I didn't vote for her on February 19th.
The more I looked at the other candidates, she was still my gal, but she wasn't my president. I've never lived a privileged life. I didn't graduate college, I never got that good job, I just moved to Menomonie with Wal-mart. And as a small-town girl, who grew up with an abusive mother, a half-Mexican sister, a father with paranoid schizophrenia, and a weird name (think Angelina Jolie's daughter), Barack Obama just spoke to me--literally. He showed up in Eau Claire, western Wisconsin's metropolis of 50,000 people, while Hillary ducked out on us, not once, but twice. She cited the weather as the cause, which was a curious explanation as I drove an hour and stood out in below-freezing temperatures for 4 hours waiting to hear Obama speak--just as several thousand other people did.
The middle of the line.
The end of the line...goes up the hill.
So if you want to know why I support Barack Obama, this is why. He is not my Messiah--coincidentally, I'm United Methodist and already have one. I didn't drink any Kool-aid, though I did help myself to some hot chocolate in that long line. I'm not a fan, or a follower, or a robot. I'm a poor white girl from western Wisconsin with a weird name who grew up in a trailer.
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